By Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't working on computers and scanners, he's spending time with his wife and kids, or...

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

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The Obama Administration is either extremely incompetent, or criminally negligent.

This author Sex, Lies & Benghazigate

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

The Obama Administration is either extremely incompetent, or criminally negligent.

This author Sex, Lies & Benghazigate

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

The Obama Administration is either extremely incompetent, or criminally negligent.

This author Sex, Lies & Benghazigate

Sex, Lies, and Benghazigate
November 16, 2012: Sex sells, as the saying goes, and suddenly, with General David Petraeus's resignation (which came, conveniently enough for President Obama, right after the election), suddenly the mainstream media has heard of Benghazi again. | Photo: Aaron Stipkovich | Benghazi, David Petraeus, Christopher Stevens, Barack Obama, Video, Scandal, Lybia, Cia,

Time For The Truth To Come Out
Published on November 16, 2012

It's actually gotten to be kind of typical for two-term presidents to face scandals in their second term. Nixon had Watergate, Reagan had Iran-Contra, Clinton had Lewinsky. But it seems that President Obama is intent on beating them all to the punch, as he continues to be embroiled in scandal just one week after his re-election.

Sex sells, as the saying goes, and suddenly, with General David Petraeus's resignation (which came, conveniently enough for President Obama, right after the election), suddenly the mainstream media has heard of Benghazi again.

Of course, most of the media can only seem to focus on the sex scandal side of things, which does raise even more questions about Benghazigate. I wrote just a little while ago about how every time the Obama administration released a new story, more questions popped up, and that hasn't changed since then. As it turns out, the FBI found out about General Petraeus's affair some time ago - likely even before he became the director of the CIA, which begs the question of why he was able to become CIA director in the first place. And even if the FBI didn't discover the affair until after Petraeus became CIA director, why was the revelation held off until after the election, if not for political reasons?

Just days ago, President Obama held a press conference, wherein he once again expressed false righteous indignation, this time over attacks on UN Ambassador Susan Rice. The president's oft-expressed anger over criticism of his administration's bungling of the Benghazi scandal is itself rather infuriating. In this case, President Obama claimed that Ambassador Rice was asked to appear on the Sunday news shows right after the attacks on September 11, and the message she disseminated on those shows, that the 9/11 Benghazi attack was the result of a protest over the YouTube video, was, wrong or right, based on the intelligence they had at the time. But the criticism of Ambassador Rice is not unfounded, and it is not just because she is "an easy target," as President Obama alleged. Susan Rice was the face of the Obama Administration's response to the Benghazi attack after it happened. President Obama refuses to comment much on the attack now, using the "pending investigation" cop-out, but the truth is that his administration told Rice to go out and spread that message. In order to appear on all of the Sunday shows, they would have had to request that time, and pre-tape some of the interviews.

The latest reports are that President Obama is considering Susan Rice to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. That being the case, it is quite significant that Rice's big 15 minutes of fame came about because she was spreading false information about an international incident. It also begs the question of why, if Susan Rice is above criticism, President Obama was so adamant during the second Presidential Debate that he had used the words "act of terror" during his speech in the Rose Garden immediately after the attack, and that he wasn't just blaming it on a protest over the video. And if Obama thinks Susan Rice is qualified to be our next Secretary of State, it's a bad sign that he thinks she needs to hide behind his skirts when she comes under criticism.

Christopher Stevens

John Christopher Stevens (April 18, 1960 – September 11, 2012) was an American diplomat and lawyer who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya from June 2012 to September 2012. He was killed when the U.S. consulate was attacked in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. | Photo: Associated Press |

But there are even more questions that remain unanswered about the Benghazi attack. There has been speculation that Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi that day to work out a deal with Turkey to funnel weapons through Turkey to the rebels in Syria. There have also been reports that the compound in Benghazi was being used as a secret CIA prison. We still don't know why repeated requests for increased security were denied prior to the attack, in spite of the fact that the Benghazi mission had been attacked multiple times in the months leading up to 9/11. Reports have indicated that the FBI knew about General Petraeus's affair for several months, but there has been no confirmed information as to why he was allowed to continue as CIA director until he suddenly resigned right after the election.

And we have received no word from anyone in the White House about whether the Obama administration is extremely incompetent or just criminally negligent. After the attack in Benghazi, President Obama told the public that he was not informed of the attack and Ambassador Stevens's death until the next day - but the Pentagon and the State Department would have a legal duty to inform the president immediately when the information came in. Likewise, he said that he had not been informed that his CIA director was under investigation by the FBI for violating his security clearance by having an extramarital affair. Given the amount of leaks coming out of this White House, I could understand some reluctance to inform the president of sensitive national security matters, but even that doesn't mean that they can just not tell the president about these things. And if the White House is being so mismanaged that the president can't even get up-to-date information from his staff, then we have the wrong man as our president.

The only thing that remains clear about the Benghazi attack is that 4 Americans are dead, and President Obama and his administration are still lying about it to the public. It's sad that it took a sex scandal to finally bring Benghazigate to the media's attention, but at least the Congressional investigations have finally started, and there is now a glimmer of hope that the public will one day find out what really happened when four Americans were killed on September 11. Sex scandal or no, General Petraeus's testimony before Congress has already proven that the Obama administration has been conducting a coordinated effort to lie to America about what happened in Benghazi. It's time for the truth to come out.

Sex, Lies & Benghazigate: Details

"Sex, Lies & Benghazigate" was first released on 11.16.2012 and last updated on 10.17.2018 6:47 AM EDT.
Robert Cleveland submitted this feature to AND Magazine.
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